“... slippage down the ranks. Muir has countless examples of young men watching their own stock fall. William Jones, curate of the parish of Broxbourne in Hertfordshire, got by on £60 a year and considered himself worse off than ‘a bricklayer’s labourer or the turner of a razor grinder’s wheel’; Basil Hall, the son of ...”

“... partly because he did so little to promote himself. Before he took over the Dial, he wrote James Joyce a cheque for $700; it came to Joyce from his publisher with a note that read: ‘Please don’t imagine that America is full of rich young men of that kind!’ Thayer wasn’t modest, but he was discreet, especially compared to the most prominent New ...”

“... out of complacency, and more alert to the suffering of others. Molesworth had been taught by William Gaskell, the Unitarian minister and husband of Elizabeth Gaskell, who was another accomplished practitioner of supernatural fiction. Gaskell’s ghost stories, more ambitious and substantial than Molesworth’s (try her unforgettable ‘Old Nurse’s ...”

“... count as hard evidence, but some of it is persuasive. There was, for instance, an article by one James Harrison in 1884 on this subject, and under the heading ‘Specimen Negroisms’ he included the following: Ef I’d a knowed = if I had known To light out fer = to run for And true enough, these are to be found in Huck’s famous closing statement: ‘if ...”

“... his occasional grudging acceptance of a community of interest. With Anne came the King’s doctor William Butts, ‘whose unobtrusive services to the evangelical cause played a key part in the course of Henrician reformation’. This Boleyn-Butts axis often appears in this book competing vigorously for limelight with Thomas Cromwell. We should not exaggerate ...”

“... Robert Montgomery during Chandler’s lifetime, and afterwards by Elliot Gould, Robert Mitchum and James Garner. He was the hero of the most listened to radio detective serial in history, and, by the time Chandler died in 1959, had sold over five million books. The private eye was the wilderness hero moved to the urban frontier, alone and unattached, living ...”

“... the greatest man since the Deluge.’ This assessment of Alexander von Humboldt by King Frederick William IV of Prussia, which Andrea Wulf quotes in her fine new biography, may be a slight exaggeration, but it reflects Humboldt’s extraordinary reputation among his contemporaries. On the centennial of his birth, 14 September 1869, elaborate celebrations were ...”

“... No part of Greek history should come home to us like the third century bc,’ William Tarn wrote in 1913. ‘It is the only period that we can in the least compare with our own.’ And yet the third century – standing midway between the classical age and the coming of Rome, undocumented by any intact surviving source – gets little attention even from specialists, despite the many intriguing figures who helped shape it ...”

“... but some people worried that Germany would lash out in revenge. One morning, on the Isle of Dogs, William Regan heard a small plane fly over and get shot down, causing a surprisingly large explosion. The same thing happened to another plane, and another. ‘I said to Alf that the gunners were on form, three over, three down. Hardly credible. We began to ...”

“... every sign of strain: Someone called Shultz is now in charge at State. The new prince is named William. The odd train Starts up again as if to celebrate, But Aslef thinks a moving train just fosters Flexible notions with regard to rosters. Ray Buckton therefore plans a whole new strike. Meanwhile the members of the SDP Mark ballot slips to name the man ...”

“... general, his characters appear to have been driven mad by America (his book has an epigraph from William Carlos Williams – ‘the pure products of America go crazy’), to have absorbed from the Midwest a massive loneliness and restlessness. Before killing her lover, the woman in ‘A Visit from Jesus’ feels that the ‘isolation of this part of Michigan ...”

“... like a ballroom without women. Then I remember foot and mouth and put out more viricide and straw. William Youatt, whose The Pig: A Treatise on the Breeds, Management, Feeding and Medical Treatment of Swine of 1847 is still the standard work on the British pig, prints many anecdotes of the docility, gentleness, affection, cleanliness, intelligence, even ...”

“... made a few decades later, and it is no surprise to learn that New York School painters such as William de Kooning and Lee Krasner were fans. The white shirt of Pastry Cook of Cagnes (also c.1922-23) reveals transparent glazes, layered and interspersed with chromatic wisps, like some elaborate dessert. Delicate touches and squiggles form the cook’s ...”

“... Basketball Association, is a trading site for classic moments in basketball matches, like LeBron James dunking. William Shatner sold an X-ray of his teeth. I saw one developer offering NFTs of famous dates. Do you want to own Michael Jackson’s first moonwalk, on 25 March 1983? That’ll currently set you back 0.5 ...”

“... to practising law and medicine. Prominent Lebanese Americans like Ralph Nader, Michael DeBakey, William Peter Blatty, Senator James Abourezk and General John Abizaid rarely visited Lebanon itself. As attached as some were to their grandmothers’ cooking and to bits of folklore, they preferred to keep the country at a ...”